Vampires Thrown Out of the Bible!

The parties responsible for canonizing the Bible found certain passages unsuitable, such as one of the earliest instances of vampirism. The Bible has been around for thousands of years in one form or another; whether you subscribe to Christian faith or not, it’s a fact that it’s one of the oldest books in the world, still published regularly. But when it was canonized by the various sects of Christianity, certain books were left out: the fragments of the Bible are called ‘apocrypha’. And there are more ‘lost’ or ‘omitted’ chapters of the Bible than many people realize. For example, the Roman Catholic Bible has a few chapters you won’t find in the standard King James version, –likeÂ Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Baruch, and others. Other versions of the Bible are incredibly different, and have been refuted strongly by theological experts, like the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Bible used by Jehova’s Witnesses). Some holy texts, like The Book of Mormon, are believed to be modern hoax, complete fiction, with no archaeological evidence to support their origins.

You’re probably thinking, what the hell does any of this have to do with vampires? Well, the fact is, there are so many different religious texts connected to Christianity and Judaism, that regardless of which version of the Bible you’re reading, you’re not getting the whole story. For example, apocrypha such as Life of Adam and Eve, which is what’s called a ‘pseudepigraphical’ text; authorship is ascribed to a historical or religious figure by which it is most likely not written. In this case, the authorship is assigned to Moses, hence the alternate title “Apocalypse of Moses”. It’s a Jewish collection of writings; Jewish in that its contents is most relevant to Judaism. Its common title is self-explanatory; it tells the story of Adam and Eve’s lives in more detail, including Satan’s explanation for his rebellion against God, and Eve’s perspective on what happened to cause their expulsion from Eden.

One of the most interesting passages in the book tells of Eve’s dream of her son, Cain, drinking the blood of his brother, Abel. This was before the world’s first murder, –not after. So in essence, Eve’s dreams foretold the event of her son’s murder at the hands of his own sibling. In her dream, Cain drinks Abel’s blood, which then pours out of his mouth. Considering that many works of historical vampire fiction (and film) present Cain as the first vampire, this story is remarkably accurate. Could Cain have actually been the world’s first vampire? Was Abel the first victim of a vampire’s attack? In the mythology of Vampire: the Masquerade, the first vampire was Caine, who, when exiled to the desert, was cursed with immortality, and then met his father’s (Adam’s) first wife, Lilith, who taught him the magic powers of vampires (Disciplines). He was then visited by four angels who offered him a chance to repent, but he denied each, and was then cursed by each with: “weakness to fire, vulnerability to sunlight, thirst for blood and constant betrayal.”

Ashley writes for Vampires.com, Werewolves.com, and other sites in the Darksites Network. She’s involved in several seedy and disreputable activities, smokes too much, and spends her late nights procrastinating for work on her first novel.